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I kept walking.

I returned to the rink entrance and stood in the gap where the rubber matting met the ice, one foot in each world. The team was running a breakout drill. Brick was directing traffic from center, Mack had planted himself net-front like a man daring anyone to move him, and the rookies were burning themselves out trying to look like they belonged. Sully was barking corrections.

Same room. Same life.

Except it was not.

Sully appeared at my shoulder. He did not look at me. Just stood there, hands on his hips, watching the drill.

“Good news or bad?”

“Both.”

“Thought so. You want ten minutes?”

“No.”

“Then finish practice. Whatever the number is, it’ll still be there when the horn blows.”

He skated onto the ice without waiting for a response.

Samantha was along the far boards, camera raised, steady in the middle of the chaos.

For one reckless second, I wanted to cross the ice and tell her about the offer and the number that should have thrilled me.

Instead, I stepped back onto the ice, joined the drill at the position I had left, and spent the remaining forty minutes of practice performing the role of a man who had everything under control.

Brick coasted up beside me during a water break and looked at me three seconds longer than casual.

“You good?” he asked.

“Fine.”

He did not believe me. I did not need him to. I just needed the next forty minutes to pass without anyone seeing the cracks.

Across the ice, Samantha lowered her camera and held my eyes.

Not assessing. Just looking.

I looked away.

If I held her gaze, she would see exactly how much trouble I was in.

Chapter sixteen

Evan

Icame to practice the next morning carrying eighty-nine-point-six million dollars in my chest like shrapnel.

Mark had called twice more the previous night. Seattle’s front office had followed up with a formal framework. San Antonio’s GM had requested a meeting for the end of the week. The machine was moving, and I was inside it, and the gears did not care whether I had decided what I wanted.

I had slept for three hours. Skated my warm-up like I was trying to punish the ice for existing. Every drill went at a tempo two clicks above necessary, because intensity was the only tool I had for processing an emotion I refused to name.

The team noticed.

The team noticed that the energy was wrong: too sharp, too hot, charged in a way nobody had approved.

Brick gave me space. Colt, Mack, and Ryan did too. Finn kept about forty feet away, which proved his rookie instincts were improving.